The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy

During the Cold War, world superpowers amassed nuclear arsenals containing the explosive power of one million Hiroshimas. The Soviet Union secretly plotted to create the "Dead Hand," a system designed to launch an automatic retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States, and developed a fearsome biological warfare machine. President Ronald Reagan, hoping to awe the Soviets into submission, pushed hard for the creation of space-based missile defenses.

Circle of Treason: CIA Traitor Aldrich Ames and the Men He Betrayed

Circle of Treason is the first account written by CIA agents who were key members of the CIA team that conducted the intense "Ames Mole Hunt." Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille were two of the five principals of the CIA team tasked with hunting one of their own and were directly responsible for identifying Ames as the mole, leading to his arrest and conviction.

A Very Expensive Poison: The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War with the West

On November 1, 2006, journalist and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London. He died 22 days later. The cause of death? Polonium - a rare, lethal, and highly radioactive substance. Here Luke Harding unspools a real-life political assassination story complete with KGB, CIA, MI6, and Russian mobsters.

Deep Undercover: My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America

One decision can end everything...or lead to unlikely redemption. Millions watched the CBS 60 Minutes special on Jack Barsky in 2015. Now, in this fascinating memoir, the Soviet KGB agent tells his story of gut-wrenching choices, appalling betrayals, his turbulent inner world, and the secret life he lived for years without getting caught.

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal

Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain's counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War - while he was secretly working for the enemy. And nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott, Philby's best friend and fellow officer in MI6.

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

In 2011, a 26-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, a clandestine website hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything - drugs, hacking software, forged passports, counterfeit cash, poisons - free of the government's watchful eye. It wasn't long before the media got wind of the new website where anyone - not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers - could buy and sell contraband detection-free.

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage

No espionage missions have been kept more secret than those involving American submarines. Now, Blind Man's Bluff shows for the first time how the navy sent submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables. It unveils how the navy's own negligence might have been responsible for the loss of the USS Scorpion, a submarine that disappeared, all hands lost, 30 years ago.

Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice

Red Notice is a searing expose of the wholesale whitewash by Russian authorities of Magnitsky's imprisonment and murder, slicing deep into the shadowy heart of the Kremlin to uncover its sordid truths.

Amazon Customer says:"This is an absolute "YES" as your next read/listen"

The Spy's Son: The True Story of the Highest-Ranking CIA Officer Ever Convicted of Espionage and the Son He Trained to Spy for Russia

Jim Nicholson was one of the CIA's top veteran case officers. By day he taught spycraft at the CIA's clandestine training center, The Farm. By night he was a minivan-driving single father racing home to have dinner with his kids. But Nicholson led a double life. For more than two years, he had met covertly with agents of Russia's foreign intelligence service and turned over troves of classified documents. In 1997 Nicholson became the highest-ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage.

The Sword and the Shield

This book reveals the most complete picture ever of the KGB and its operations in the United States and Europe. It is based on an extremely top secret archive which details the full extent of its worldwide network. Christopher Andrew is professor of modern and contemporary history and chair of the history department at Cambridge University, a former visiting professor of national security at Harvard, a frequent guest lecturer at other United States universities, and a regular host of BBC radio and TV programs.

Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story

Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story is the spellbinding memoir of Devine's time in the CIA, where he served for more than 30 years, rising to become the acting deputy director of operations, responsible for all of the agency's spying operations. This is a story of intrigue and high-stakes maneuvering - all the more gripping when the fate of our geopolitical order hangs in the balance. But this audiobook also sounds a warning to our nation's decision makers.

Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda

Now, in the first book ever written about this ultrasecretive department, the former director of OTS teams up with an internationally renowned intelligence historian to give listeners an unprecedented look at the devices and operations deemed "inappropriate for public disclosure" by the CIA just two years ago.

The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia

A brilliant investigative marrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy. David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman reveals how a few players managed to take over Russia's cash-strapped economy and then divvy it up in loans-for-shares deals.

Three Minutes to Doomsday: An Agent, a Traitor, and the Worst Espionage Breach in U.S. History

In 1988 Joe Navarro, one of the youngest agents ever hired by the FBI, was dividing his time between SWAT assignments, flying air reconnaissance, and working counterintelligence. But his real expertise was "reading" body language. He possessed an uncanny ability to glean the thoughts of those he interrogated.

Lord Emsworth says:"The best of Clancy with the best of Law &amp; Order"

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, the never-before-told story behind America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies. Skunk Works is the true story of America's most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the chronicle of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works is a drama of Cold War confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human achievement against fantastic odds.

Left of Boom: How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda

On September 11, 2001, Doug Laux was a freshman in college, on the path to becoming a doctor. But with the fall of the Twin Towers came a turning point in his life. After graduating, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get himself to Afghanistan and into the center of the action. Through persistence and hard work, he was fast-tracked to a clandestine operations position overseas. Dropped into a remote region of Afghanistan, he received his baptism by fire.

Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the US Army's Elite, 1956-1990

The massive armies of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies posed a huge threat to the nations of Western Europe. US military planners decided they needed a plan to slow the juggernaut they expected when and if a war began. The plan was Special Forces Berlin. Their mission, should hostilities commence, was to wreak havoc behind enemy lines and buy time for vastly outnumbered NATO forces to conduct a breakout from the city.

The Spy Who Couldn't Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI's Hunt for America's Stolen Secrets

Before Edward Snowden's infamous data breach, the largest theft of government secrets was committed by an ingenious traitor whose intricate espionage scheme and complex system of coded messages were made even more baffling by his dyslexia. His name is Brian Regan, but he came to be known as the Spy Who Couldn't Spell.

Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam

By January 1968, despite an influx of half a million American troops, the fighting in Vietnam seemed to be at a stalemate. Yet General William Westmoreland, commander of American forces, announced a new phase of the war in which "the end begins to come into view". The North Vietnamese had different ideas. In mid-1967, the leadership in Hanoi had started planning an offensive intended to win the war in a single stroke.

How to Catch a Russian Spy: The True Story of an American Civilian Turned Self-Taught Double Agent

For three nerve-wracking years, Naveed Jamali spied on America for the Russians, trading thumb drives of sensitive technical data for envelopes of cash, selling out his own beloved country across noisy restaurant tables and in quiet parking lots. Or so the Russians believed. In fact this young American civilian was a covert double agent working with the FBI. The Cold War wasn't really over. It had just gone high tech.

Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself - While the Rest of Us Die

A fresh window on American history: the eye-opening truth about the government's secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil, even if the rest of us die - a road map that spans from the dawn of the nuclear age to today.

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history of the organization, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain", from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present.

The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin

The epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president - the only complete biography in English - that fully captures his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history, by the former New York Times Moscow bureau chief.

Code Warriors: NSA's Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union

The National Security Agency was born out of the legendary codebreaking programs of World War II that cracked the famed Enigma machine and other German and Japanese codes, thereby turning the tide of Allied victory. In the postwar years, as the United States developed a new enemy in the Soviet Union, our intelligence community found itself targeting not soldiers on the battlefield, but suspected spies, foreign leaders, and even American citizens.

Publisher's Summary

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand comes the riveting story of the CIA's most valuable spy in the Soviet Union and an evocative portrait of the agency's Moscow station, an outpost of daring espionage in the last years of the Cold War.

While getting into his car on the evening of February 16, 1978, the chief of the CIA's Moscow station was handed an envelope by an unknown Russian. Its contents stunned the Americans: details of top-secret Soviet research and development in military technology that was totally unknown to the United States.

From 1979 to 1985, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer at a military research center, cracked open the secret Soviet military research establishment, using his access to hand over tens of thousands of pages of material about the latest advances in aviation technology, alerting the Americans to possible developments years in the future. He was one of the most productive and valuable spies ever to work for the United States in the four decades of global confrontation with the Soviet Union. Tolkachev took enormous personal risks, but so did his CIA handlers. Moscow station was a dangerous posting to the KGB's backyard. The CIA had long struggled to recruit and run agents in Moscow, and Tolkachev became a singular breakthrough. With hidden cameras and secret codes, and in face-to-face meetings with CIA case officers in parks and on street corners, Tolkachev and the CIA worked to elude the feared KGB.

Drawing on previously secret documents obtained from the CIA, as well as interviews with participants, Hoffman reveals how the depredations of the Soviet state motivated one man to master the craft of spying against his own nation until he was betrayed to the KGB by a disgruntled former CIA trainee. No one has ever told this story before in such detail, and Hoffman's deep knowledge of spycraft, the Cold War, and military technology makes him uniquely qualified to bring listeners this real-life espionage thriller.

An extremely compelling and exhaustively researched true story of soviet engineer Adolf Tolkachev who for years passed on the USSR's most valuable military secrets to the CIA. The book functions well as a historical spy thriller — it is rife with detailed descriptions of tradecraft, dead-drops, smuggled spy cameras and purloined radar schematics — but also does an excellent job of describing the Cold War political, cultural and military environment in which the espionage occurred. That context makes it easy to appreciate just how much the cloak-and-dagger work in the back alleys of Moscow significantly shifted the balance of power toward the US at the height of the cold war. The narrative also serves as an effective character study of a clever and highly motivated man who routinely risked his life to damage the government he despised — and also of the CIA officers tasked with the competing goals of keeping him productive and keeping him safe.

Well told, well narrated, and fascinating. The author has said in interviews that he begged pleaded and cajoled The CIA into declassified information for this book. I hope this book is very successful for him because in my opinion all that work was worth it to produce this.

Interesting and insightful history. The story is written to inform and avoids the more dramatic and colorful writing found in books of fiction on the same subject, but there is enough drama here to keep one engaged. There are "dryer" passages related to the changes in administrations and leadership at the CIA & stations, but those passages are relatively short and help to inform the reader on how those changes affected culture and decision making at the CIA. A worthy listen.

Some of the things I read about I can understand and then there are other aspects of the story that blow my mindI enjoyed listening to a story which was when I grow up I can only imagine what goes on today

If you are fans of the classic Cold War spy fiction (ala John LeCarre) this true story will blow you away. The author does a great job of presenting an overview of American intelligence operations against the Soviet Union in the late 1970s through the mid 1980s. The amount of relevant scientific and engineering intelligence obtained by CK sphere (code name) may never be replicated.The book is exciting although it does present the more mundane "real life" of the world of intelligence gathering (surveillance detection runs, dead drop surveillance etc). Tradecraft is explained in great detail.The performance is quite good. The narrator switches easily into Russian accents. At times I felt it was not necessary, but he did quite a good job.Highly recommended.

The Good – The Billion Dollar Spy was my first “Cold War” espionage book and it has directed me to an entirely new genre of books to explore. It tells a story that I never knew about and tells it very well indeed. It is a very solid, well written and a well researched work. While it does not jump off the page, or more appropriately, out of the device at you it does do several things very well; it educates, it broadens understanding of the geopolitical climate during the Cold War, and it humanizes the people involved. It even evokes a modicum of emotional connection near the end.

The Not So Good – The book did have a few, and I mean very few, areas where it dragged a bit. None of these moments were significant enough to detract from the fundamental focus of the book however.

The Narration – Dan Woren; I can only say that I am always pleased to find another narrator that will be added to my list of those to keep an eye out for in the future. Woren had solid pronunciations, his imitations of Russian accents were decent and his style never became monotone. I would stop short of saying that he brought anything more to the book, but I would say that he was the right voice for this particular read, no doubt.

The Overall – If you like books about this subject or history in general I think you will be happy with it. While I am not sure I will listen to it start to finish again, it will remain in my library as a reference. I did make several notes in the bookmarks about particular topics that I may refer to at a later time and that is my barometer for what constitutes a good book.